Home affordability watch: price tags in midsize metros

FILE- In this Oct. 24, 2017, file photo, vehicles travel along State Street, the main thoroughfare through town, as seen from the Bicentennial Tower in Erie, Pa. Each quarter, NerdWallet calculates home affordability for 172 metropolitan areas for which the National Association of Realtors publishes home prices. NerdWallet narrowed its focus this quarter to 87 medium-size metros with populations between 250,000 and 1 million. Erie ranked in the top five most affordable medium-size metro areas in the third quarter. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

Big coastal cities have some of the highest house prices in the country. In comparison, medium-size cities are often relative bargains. But not always. Each quarter, NerdWallet calculates home affordability for 172 metropolitan areas for…

Big coastal cities have some of the highest house prices in the country. In comparison, medium-size cities are often relative bargains. But not always.

Each quarter, NerdWallet calculates home affordability for 172 metropolitan areas for which the National Association of Realtors publishes home prices. NerdWallet narrowed its focus this quarter to 87 medium-size metros with populations between 250,000 and 1 million. They range from Yakima, Washington (population 250,193), to Tulsa, Oklahoma (990,706).

Affordability for buying a home was estimated by comparing each metro area’s median household income with the monthly principal-and-interest payment for a median-priced single-family home in the third quarter. After a 20 percent down payment, house payments were calculated at 4.74 percent, the average interest rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage in the third quarter in NerdWallet’s daily mortgage rates survey. Payments exclude insurance and property taxes.

Rankings were compiled using data from the National Association of Realtors, the U.S. Census Bureau and NerdWallet surveys. Even medium-size cities can boast a touch of Hollywood, so we’ve mentioned movies and TV shows that were filmed or set in each of these.

Low house prices make Youngstown affordable, although typical household income is well below the national median of $60,336. Youngstown was the filming location for portions of the 1978 movie “The Deer Hunter.”

2. PEORIA, ILLINOIS

Median home price: $131,300

Median household income: $57,453

Principal and interest payment: $547 (11.4 percent of monthly income)

Population: 372,427

Peoria had the highest median household income among the five most affordable metros on this list. Parts of the 1986 Richard Pryor movie “Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling” were filmed here.

3. ROCKFORD, ILLINOIS

Median home price: $131,600

Median household income: $55,484

Principal and interest payment: $549 (11.9 percent of monthly income)

Population: 338,291

This city was home to the Rockford Peaches, a women’s professional baseball team in the 1940s and 1950s that was fictionalized in the 1992 movie “A League of Their Own.”

4. ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA

Median home price: $123,200

Median household income: $50,614

Principal and interest payment: $514 (12.2 percent of monthly income)

Population: 274,541

Erie lies on the shore of Lake Erie. Portions of 2009’s “The Road” were filmed in Presque Isle State Park, offshore from downtown.

Reno calls itself “The Biggest Little City in the World” and has big-city housing prices, dealing it a bad hand for affordability. Some of “Sister Act,” the 1992 Whoopi Goldberg comedy, was filmed in Reno.